Coffee History
by Terres De Brume
Summary: Kurt will never forget his first coffee.  -Set shortly after Prom Queen, before Funerals.


**Disclaimer :** If I owned _Glee_, there would be much more Klainetana and Kum bromance going on. So there, you have it, they're not mine. I'm still having fun borrowing them, though.

**Note :** Written in a little less than an hour. I was struck with sudden inspiration for this while fixing coffee for my mom and grandma.  
>Also, I don't drink coffee myself, and actually I had to google 'mocha' to be able to write this fic. Yes, that's the extent of my ignorance. Feel free to laugh ;)<br>(Sidenote: I can't believe I just wrote a thousand words about a drink I don't even like. I'm amazed at myself.)

**Coffee History.**

Kurt will never forget his first coffee.

The details of this day are blurry. He remembers a scratching suit, too many people, and a sky way too blue for the tragedy it covered. He remembers standing in the living room and waiting, _desperately waiting_ for someone to pop out from behind the sofa –the lamp, the coffee table, _anywhere_- and yell "April's fool!" so that he could go back to having a mom.

Kurt has next to no souvenir of the actual funerals. He remembers the music, obviously… he still can't listen to John Farnham's _Angels_ without ending a sobbing mess, after all. Sometimes, he has some hazy memory of a soft green drape partially covering the coffin, and the fuzzy, sparse hair on the priest's head, but that's about it.

Still, ten years later, there is one thing he clearly remembers: his father, sitting at the kitchen table, with his mother's favorite coffee mug in his hand and a full coffee pot waiting on the countertop. Kurt remembers the absence of sugar and cream, remembers thinking it wasn't normal because Dad always put some cream, or milk, or sugar in his coffee. Mom always drank her coffee black, Kurt knows this –doesn't remember, but knows- because, she used to say, there's no point in denying the truth. (Kurt remembers her saying that, once, though he's not sure if she was speaking about coffee right then or not.)

Kurt remembers the smell drifting to his nostrils, scrunching his nose a little. He remembers climbing on Dad's laps and burying his face in the formal shirt. He doesn't really remember what led to Dad offering him a taste of his beverage, to be honest. Surely, it wasn't really important, if he forgot it.

What Kurt remembers really well, though, is the taste. He remembers the bitter sting of it on his tongue, and Dad chuckling as he rubbed at his tongue with his sleeve to try and erase it. Most of all though, he remembers what Dad said when he complained he couldn't understand why grown up liked to drink that kind of _stuff._

"_It's a bit like life, son."_

"_I don't understand."_

"_Most kids don't. That's probably why coffee's a grown up thing."_

Kurt's first coffee –his very first, two weeks into high school and mere hours after his first slushy facial- was black. Probably because he couldn't think of any other way to take it. He remembers sitting in the Lima Bean after a too long, stinky bus ride and thinking: you were right, Dad. Life's like coffee. Bitter.

He never really paid attention to the change of coffee order, a few months later, when he decided the school jocks could fuck off, he wasn't going to change. It didn't make his life any easier –quite the reverse, actually- but he felt better for it, and he'd started adding milk to his drink. Milk, and milk chocolate, just so he could pretend he couldn't taste the bitter coffee underneath it all.

Kurt knows he used to cling to that, the sweet accompaniment to his drink, the illusion that his drink –his life- wasn't bitter in the slightest, _thank you very much._ He remembers the obscene amount of sugar and cream he put in his coffees when Dad was lying in his hospital bed, the extra chocolate after his Let's Redecorate The Basement plan led to Finn yelling at him. (He remembers how he chunked the coffee without drinking it, too. He may be tempted to lie to himself sometimes, but not to the point of not acknowledging when he's the one responsible for the bitter taste in his mouth. Chocolate wasn't that good an idea at the time, after all.)

He stopped doing that, though –adding extra sugar and fat to his drink every time something goes wrong in his life. He stopped when he realized that he would need several cups of whipped cream and sugar to drown out the bitterness of Karofsky's kiss, especially so soon after Dad's return home. He'd have vomited everything before the bitterness of it all could even start ebbing away, anyway.

'_It's a bit like life, son.'_

Kurt didn't understand back then. He was too young. He knows, now, that life really _can _be bitter at times. He knows it better than most kids his age, better than anyone in McKinley.

"Kurt? Are you alright?"

Kurt blinks, surprised by the sudden squeeze of Blaine's fingers around his own. His boyfriend looks concerned, lines of worry etched between his eyebrows. And how can he not? Just the day before, Kurt was elected Prom Queen, after all! It's not the title in itself that bothers him –in a different school, with different people, Kurt can imagine himself throwing his name in the competition, just for good fun and with no intention to win. The problem, precisely, is that there was no fun in his election. Nothing but cruelty, and even if he ended up walking on the stage to get his crown and dancing with Blaine, it hurt. Still does, actually.

"I'm… fine. Not jumping with joy yet, but I'm getting there."

Blaine gives him a soft smile and leaves his seat, rounding the small table to drape an arm around his shoulder and plant a quick –discreet- peck on his cheek, and Kurt smiles softly, twirling his nearly empty cup between his fingers, his free hand twining with Blaine's.

He thinks back to the beginnings of their relationships, from the failed spying mission to the Prom Bal, _via_ the GAP debacle. He thinks of how both their lives sucked before –before Blaine went to Dalton, before Kurt met him. He thinks of how some part of it still suck –how they have to work around schedules and driving times to see each other, how they know, now, that McKinley hasn't become any more accepting than it usually was.

He thinks of how he still drinks coffee, after all this time, despite the taste of it –it really is an acquired taste.

And as he thinks back to that quiet, painful evening when he tasted his very first sip of coffee, and he remembers Dad's words, he thinks that, yes, Life is like coffee: bitter. But then he thinks of Dad and Carole, of the total awesomeness that is Furt, of Blaine. And he realizes that Dad forgot to mention something important that night –something he probably didn't even remember at the time. Coffee (Life) maybe bitter, but it doesn't mean you can't find things to make it sweeter.

Most of all, it doesn't mean you can't enjoy it.


End file.
